The Cilappatikāram of Iḷaṅkō Aṭikaḷ

The Cilappatikāram of Iḷaṅkō Aṭikaḷ: An Epic of South India

Literary scholarship on India’s epic traditions has long focused on the Sanskrit classics – the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyana – thereby excluding works in Tamil. Now, the esteemed poet R. Parthasarathy offers a memorable new translation of the renowned Tamil poem, the Cilappatikāram, one of the world’s literary masterpieces and India’s finest epic in a language other than Sanskrit.

Traditionally believed to have been composed in the 5th century C. E. by Iḷaṅkō Aṭikaḷ, a Tamil prince, the Cilappatikāram – which means “the epic of an anket” – is the compelling love story of Kannaki and Kovalan. The anklet is the emblem of the goddess Pattini, and the poem depicts the transformation of Kannaki into the goddess. Parthasarathy’s introduction examines the poem in a comparative perspective with reference to the Sanskrit and Greek epics, and proposes that Iḷaṅkō rewrites the epic tradition by subverting its essentially androcentric bias. The post-script discusses the poetics of the Tamil discourse: akam, “inside”, and puram, “outside”, which represent two of the three distinct phases through which the narrative moves – the erotic and the heroic. To these, Iḷaṅkō adds a third phase, the mythic (puranam).

The poem is divided into three books, named after the capitals of the three Tamil kingdoms that constitute the poem’s setting. Love in all its aspect is exposed in “The Book of Puhar”. “The Book of Maturai” retells the myth of Kannaki’s apotheosis into the goddess Pattini. The heroic aspects of kingship are the subject of “The Book of Vanci”.

The Cilappatikāram relates the story of Tamil civilization, but it is also a poem about marriage and family. Considered the Tamil national epic, it spells out in unforgettable poetry the issues that humanity has always confronted: love, war, evil, fate, and death, which have been the special concern of the epic from the beginning of time.

(Translations from the Asian Classics)